Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/119

 yards ahead, making for the fence as if he intended to take it at a jump and go right on.

Only Peck had no such intention. It was improbable that he even realized his proximity to the fence, or anything at all except that he was on the run, a persistent man behind him trying to make a mussy ending of his romantic career. Peck's hat was gone, his reins were flying wild. He was holding to the saddle-horn with both hands, bumping considerably, his long legs clamped on the horse's neck, bending forward in earnest effort to reduce to short and inconspicuous appearance a figure that nature had made uncommonly prominent and long.

The fence-rider was not in sight, that being a place of irregular small hills looking pretty much as if nature's dump-wagons had been emptied of their last loads there, ridding themselves of the left-over from the job. Tippie humped to the race, to get to the spot where Peck must hit the fence before the guard could overhaul him and take the horse as liquidated damages.

It was a hopeless race, as Rawlins could see from the jump-off. They had not covered half the distance when the little roan dashed up to the wires as if he hadn't been figuring on a fence within forty miles.

When he discovered his mistake, the little horse braced himself for a stop, forelegs stiff as posts, hoofs driven into the ground. It was a beautiful slide for home, the horse coming up suddenly with his nose against the wire. Peck was not prepared for this abrupt stop. Perhaps he would not have been prepared if he had-known it was coming. When the horse stopped, Peck rose from the saddle with the ease and